


it's caving in around me

by buries



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 17:14:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4795679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buries/pseuds/buries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>do you want to go through the jungle or the forest, bell? because i'm not going to let you bear this alone.</i> or the one where octavia grants bellamy forgiveness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's caving in around me

**Author's Note:**

> this is a missing scene post-s2 that will probably never happen. i've had this half-written for a while now, so i'm pretty happy that it's finally done.
> 
> this was inspired by _how can you have lived this long, and not give in to rage? don't you understand; we've both outlived our age?_
> 
> title is from hasley's _coming down_. this is unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine. ♥

He doesn't seek Octavia out.

After they return to Camp Jaha, he checks up on her a few times to make sure her cuts and bruises are healing nicely, but, otherwise, he lets Lincoln shadow her. He's always been better at it, even if Bellamy's been that very person for her entire life. Lincoln does a good job. He doubts the Grounder would be the reason why Octavia gets sent into the Skybox.

But he finds that she tricks him, anyway. In his room in Camp Jaha, she leaves him a paper flower. Instead of writing a note boasting of her prowess at folding bits of random paper into shapes, it's a quick and terse note of _Crappy cell full of roots._

Bellamy's never really been able to deny Octavia anything. When he'd asked her if she wanted to go through the jungle or the forest, she'd said the beach, the ocean, the stars. They'd travelled the galaxy together, just as they've explored the earth.

He's at the room Kane had interrogated him so many weeks before. It's still as dark as it had been then, despite the obvious hole in the ceiling with weeds and leaves hanging over it. He looks up at it when she walks in, her footsteps powerful rather than soft against the hard ground.

The doors gasp as they shut behind them. It feels final, like she's locking him in the Skybox with her. It's how it should've been a year ago. It's how it was meant to be, Bellamy and Octavia against the world. 

Her brows furrow, her mouth sharp and jaw clenched as she peers at him. His heart races as he finds himself more terrified at the thought of her probing him for answers than he ever had with Kane.

Then again, Bellamy still holds the same opinion of him as he did all those weeks ago. He doesn't respect a man who had never gone to the ends of the earth to earn prove himself worthy of wearing a crown Bellamy refuses to let cradle his own skull.

All it takes is for him to look at her. She blinks after staring at him for so long. Sometimes she does that, staring at him so intently, wanting to gain his attention or see his desire to ignore her break. It's either getting easier to give in or harder to maintain his facade of disinterest when he feels like there's stones on his shoulders instead of on the roof of Camp Jaha. 

Despite how hard her voice is, it cracks, "You're avoiding me." She sounds like the little girl she used to be, even though she doesn't look like her anymore. Her hair is still braided. There's only a soft layer of war paint over her eyes. Other than that, she looks like O after Mom tried to style her hair. Crossing her arms against her chest, she arches her brow as she pins him to the very corner of his once-jail cell.

He lets his gaze drift along the wall beneath the crack in the Ark's ceiling before he looks to her. He doesn't mean for his voice to sound so tired, "You asked me to come. I came." Lifting his arms, it's a pathetic shrug, one reminiscent of the times when he'd become exhausted by her antics. 

He isn't now. 

If he's exhausted by anyone, it's who he sees when he's fortunate enough to find a panel of glass to look into.

Octavia frowns, confusion so palpable he thinks it may be responsible for the earth trying to crawl its way inside of the Ark. "Why are you pushing me away?"

He closes his eyes and tries to temper his voice, but he still sounds exasperated, "I'm not —"

"Ever since you came back, you've been distancing yourself." She takes a step forward before she stops. It reminds him of how they had approached Lincoln, unsure if he was still _him_ or the monster Mount Weather had almost carved him into being. He wonders if Octavia had approached him with the same uncertainty when he'd returned to camp without Bellamy in tow. "It's like you can barely look at me —"

He shakes his head, "It's not that." He takes a step forward to only stop. Octavia looks down at his feet, as if wanting to see if there's roots keeping him at bay, far from her, even though he knows she can easily cross the distance and extend her arm out to brush the tips of her fingers against him.

She looks up at him with a pinched expression. He holds one of his hands, cradling it, like he's slapped her. "Then what is it, Bell? Seriously." She takes a step, teeters on the precipice, but doesn't move backward or even plunge into the arms of the earth and darkness below. "I'd really like to know what I've done to piss you off so much."

Bellamy remains quiet. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He thinks that's enough for her to go on, even though he knows what she surmises from it is wrong.

Her lips pinch together as she glances off to the side. For a moment, she's unrecognisable, the Grounder girl who's become so sharp not even her other life can grab hold of her. 

Then, she softens. Feeling her gaze on him, he deflates as she does. "If it's me wanting to learn how to fight, then I …" She shakes her head. Her voice is too soft to be the girl who had been the very first person from space to ever walk on the earth. It's too soft for the Grounder who screams her own battle cries and demands the Heda to fall to her knees. "I can't stop it. I don't want to. I'm not the little girl who lived beneath the floor anymore, Bell."

"I know," he looks at her unblinkingly. She looks up at him, then away. He shakes his head, feeling his fingers grasp at his other hand. "That's not it."

Her brows pinch as her expression seems to fall. Her voice cracks, "Then _what_ is it?"

Bellamy remains quiet. He watches as her hands, bunched at her sides, flex, as though she isn't sure if she wants to clench her fists or not. She looks at him, gaze sharp and unblinking. It's like flying too close to the sun sometimes.

He opens his mouth to close it. He knows she wants to speak, to push him onward, but even Octavia, for all her fire, knows when to let a dying ember spark itself.

When he speaks, his voice is quiet. He can barely hear it himself. "I killed someone."

Her lips press together and her swallow echoes throughout the makeshift jail cell. He doesn't look at her for a moment. When he does, it's from the corner of his eye — she's staring at him with her expression pinched in sympathy.

It's never pity with Octavia. She doesn't look at him and feel sorry that he's even alive. She looks at him and feels apologetic she hadn't been there to bear it for him.

"In the mountain," he continues, looking down at her feet. Her boots are dirty, covered in mud and grass blades that have stuck to the soles. "I killed someone in Mount Weather with my hands."

He watches her feet move, peering up at her, as if startled, that she's even capable of it at all. Rather than walking away from him, spinning on her heel and showing her back, she approaches him.

Reaching for his hands, she grasps them in her own. Her fingers are long and soft, despite her always carrying a blade these days. Her touch is as warm as the sun.

His mouth falls open, ready to protest, and her fingers grip his more fiercely. She looks down at their hands. "These hands, Bell?"

He doesn't answer her. She shakes his hands, or maybe that's just her, almost shivering with her refusal to drop them from her own grip.

Her fingers trace along his, but she doesn't let them go.

"You told me about a hundred times that these were the hands that held me for hours while Mom slept," she says, looking down at them. She turns them over, palms facing up, and traces the lifelines. There's a small scar in the very centre of his right palm she glides her thumb across. "And these were the ones that made sure I never messed up."

She looks up at him. He's looking down at her fingers. "Do you think you're going to hurt me or something, Bell?"

He looks up at her. He thinks to ask _Haven't I already?_ but he finds that her mere gaze, eyes wet and her lips pressed hard and tightly together, burns it from his throat.

"You're the only person that I trust not to," she says, quietly. She looks up at him like she's disappointed. Glancing down at their hands, she squeezes his. "You did what you had to do," she says, voice slightly firmer. 

"I killed a man who was a father," he says.

She inhales through her mouth as she searches his lifelines for the words she wants.

He doesn't bend down to catch her gaze. It's easier to talk to the tight braids in her long hair. "We killed innocent kids, O."

"Yeah," she breathes out. She keeps her head bowed. "But they were going to kill you." She looks up at him and he notices her eyes are glistening. "They were killing us, Bellamy. They weren't even thinking about the fact that you had someone back home waiting for you."

He shakes his head, "It doesn't change anything."

"Yeah," she nods, "it does." Her hands grip his so tightly he thinks his bones will shatter. "Because they forgave you for it, Bell. That girl Jasper's always talking about, she forgave you, didn't she?" She tilts her head then, peering up at him. 

As tempting as it is to turn away, he doesn't.

"They knew what you had done, and they forgave you, Bell." Octavia looks back down at their hands. "Mom once told me the hardest decisions are the ones that stay with you forever. I used to think maybe I was that, you know? I was a bad decision she'd feel remorse for." Her hands trace his, drawing patterns on them now. He remembers a time where he'd gotten her paint, and she'd used him as a canvas instead of the paper he'd traded some of his own things for. 

She stays quiet for a long time, transfixed by her circles and squares. He thinks she draws a lopsided love heart in the very centre of his palm. "But I think I understand what she meant now."

Octavia looks up at him. "Do you want to go through the jungle or the forest, Bell? Because I'm not going to let you bear this alone." Her hands grip his hard. "You didn't let Mom or me carry the heavens. You're not some Titan who needs to learn his lesson by being crushed under a weight he can barely handle."

His fingers curl around her own, uncaring of how hard he grips her hands. When he looks up at her, he sees tears trail down her cheeks.

"You risked everything for me," she says. She pulls one of her hands away to wipe the back of her knuckles against her cheek. "And I know you did the same for that kid, and for that girl, and for all those people who helped you inside that mountain. Because that's who you are, Bellamy." 

Pressing her fingers against her cheek, she only smears her tears against her skin. It does nothing, but it's enough for her, it seems, as she grasps his hands like he's about to float away. "You used to ask me which hero I wanted to be when I grew up, if it was Heracles or Perseus, but I always wanted to be you."

Bellamy pulls his hands away. Once he does, releasing himself from her grip, he sees her expression flicker in confusion and hurt. But it's hard to watch how her face may shift when he pulls her to him, wrapping his arms tightly around her.

He thinks to say he's sorry, but he knows she can feel it, pressing her forgiveness into his back where he's been flogging himself for a burden he's refused to let anyone else carry.

Her hands are tight around his neck, possessing a strength he thinks to be greater than even his own. Octavia buries her face into his shoulder.

She sniffs, before she whispers, "Don't you ever try push me away again." He feels her press her face into his shoulder more. Her hands grip at the fabric of his shirt, nails digging into his back. When she speaks again, she tilts her head up and her voice is firm, unwavering in its own conviction, "I'm not going anywhere."


End file.
